The Progs’ problem child

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As I’ve often said before, I have no patience for the petty disputes and long-held grudges that are often a feature of Dem/Prog relations in Vermont. And although there have been minor offenses aplenty on both sides, I think the Democrats have some additional responsibility to be the adult in the room. They’ve been around a lot longer, and they already rule the roost; the Progs are hardly a threat. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously compared US/Canada relations to an elephant and a mouse sharing a bed, and the same can be said of the Dems and the Progs: The Prog mouse can disturb the Dem elephant (instant mixed metaphor, sorry) by accidentally tickling it. The elephant can disturb the mouse by rolling over and crushing it.

That said, there’s a member of the Progs’ statewide ticket who is, inadvertently, doing all he can to annoy the elephant. That would be Ben Eastwood, Prog candidate for Secretary of State.

Yes, the same Ben Eastwood who shot down a motion to endorse Democratic incumbent Jim Condos by calling him a “crony capitalist” because of his former employment by Vermont Gas Systems. Which also, it must be said, gave Eastwood a clear shot at the Prog nomination.

Well, Eastwood has spent the first couple months of his “campaign” barely addressing the office he’s running for, and making often-incendiary comments on his current fixation: the Israeli military action in Gaza. He’s agin’ it, very strongly. And he has a right to express his opinions, but when I look at his Facebook page of message after message about the Middle East, I wonder if he’s really serious about becoming Secretary of State. The last time he mentioned the campaign on his Facebook page was June 12, when he’d just finished collecting petition signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Yes, I know he’s not going to win and so does he. But if he accepts a party’s nomination for a high office, he should at least present the appearance of engagement.

Beyond that, he’s been picking a fight with a couple of well-known Democrats over on Green Mountain Daily — Dem state committee alternate member Jack McCullough and Montpelier City Clerk John Odum by name. The details of the argument are many, and if you want to follow it, click on the link. The point is, Ben Eastwood, Progressive Party candidate for Secretary of State, is stirring up trouble with Democrats on an issue that has nothing to do with Vermont politics. He should know better, and he should be more responsible.

After all, this is happening at the very time that Dean Corren, Progressive candidate for Lieutenant Governor, is actively seeking Democratic support — and trying to overcome any bruised feelings that might exist from past Prog-to-Dem insults.

Seeking support from, among others, the colleagues and friends of Jack McCullough.

Here’s a tip, Mr. Eastwood. If you accept the honor of a party’s nomination, you assume responsibility for being a public face of your party and fostering your party’s image and prospects. You have a duty to focus on your own campaign and the office you seek, and temporarily stick a sock in it regarding other issues.

Any member of the Democratic state committee would be well within their bounds if, when called upon by Dean Corren, they asked him about his running mate, Ben Eastwood. It’d be perfectly appropriate for any member of the media to ask Corren if he supports Eastwood.

In addition to the trouble Eastwood is stirring up right now, there’s also the problem of his publicly-available record. He is either a vaccine truther or he’s strongly sympathetic with those who believe that vaccines are poison. He’s vehemently opposed to wind power. And he’s given hints of secessionist leanings.

To top it all off, remember the Progressive gubernatorial primary two years ago, when the Progs chose not to run a candidate and anti-wind extremist Annette Smith launched a last-minute write-in bid to secure the Prog nomination? Party stalwart Martha Abbott agreed to put her name up as a write-in, to keep the nomination from falling into Smith’s hands. After all, it would have been harmful to the Progs’ aspirations to have a person with an extreme and non-Prog agenda as the party’s standard bearer.

Well, Eastwood apparently wasn’t aware of Smith’s candidacy until after the fact, but he then wrote “I wish I’d known about Annette Smith’s write in campaign, and I would have written her in…” 

He would have written in Annette Smith over Martha Abbott? In spite of the clear and obvious wishes of his own Progressive Party?

And now, two years later, he gets one of the top spots on the Progressive ticket?

He certainly isn’t treating that honor, nor the office of the Secretary of State, nor the Progressive Party, nor the Democrats, with the respect they deserve. In so doing, he is hurting the Progs’ case to be taken seriously as a fully-formed, mature party capable of governing. Having someone like Eastwood on the statewide ticket makes ’em look more like a larger Liberty Union Party than a convincing alternative to the Democrats.

Serious-minded Progs, the likes of Corren and Chris Pearson, must be desperately hoping that Eastwood’s candidacy comes and goes without doing too much damage to the Progressive brand they are working so hard to create.

Another step down the rabbit hole for the VTGOP

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Terri Hallenbeck has livened up Your Monday Freeploid with an incendiary piece about Dan Feliciano, Liberatarian candidate for Governor. Well, the incendiary part isn’t about Feliciano; it’s about signs of Republican support for him. Hallenbeck quotes a few Republicans expressing interest in Feliciano because of his steadfast opposition to single-payer health care.

Including, most notably, one of the Vermont Republican Party’s top officials:

“I see people responding favorably to that,” said Mark Snelling, the Republican Party treasurer and son of former Gov. Richard Snelling and Lt. Gov. Barbara Snelling.

Snelling has yet to commit to a candidate. “I’m going to be interested in watching Dan Feliciano,” he said.

Oh, that’s just great. How about a little party loyalty there, Mark? I bet your far more distinguished parents are spinning in their graves.* Remember, this is the guy whose tenure as treasurer has corresponded to the bleakest period in history for the party’s finances. He was also, it must be said, part of “Angry Jack” Lindley’s team, and won re-election as treasurer last fall in spite of Phil Scott’s efforts to reshape the VTGOP hierarchy.

*Mark Snelling has corrected my egregious blunder; Barbara Snelling is, in fact, “alive and well.” I apologize, and thank him for the correction. 

Going even farther into quisling territory is state committee member Patricia Crocker, who outright says she’ll be voting Feliciano. Now, the state committee has a lot of members, so Snelling’s Lib-curious comment is more noteworthy than Crocker’s complete betrayal.

Hallenbeck also reveals that there was a petition movement in June to get Feliciano on the Republican primary ballot, which could have made the primary verrrrrry interesting. A sizable minority of the state committee was willing to back perpetual loser John MacGovern for party chair rather than voting for Phil Scott’s choice, “Super Dave” Sunderland. It would have been fascinating to see how much of the hard-core Republican primary electorate would have opted for Feliciano instead of the putatively moderate Scott Milne.

Especially since Milne’s initial forays into campaigning have been awfully dismal. More on that later.

Feliciano is encouraging supporters to cast write-in votes for him in the August primary. And Snelling openly muses that a Feliciano challenge to Milne would actually be a good thing:

Winning a write-in campaign for governor is a very long shot, Snelling noted. “I would be doubtful it would be possible,” he said. But Feliciano’s presence in the race could play a part in changing the debate, particularly on health care, Snelling said. “I would think the campaign trail is going to move Scott Milne to come out stronger.”

Hallenbeck chose not to quote, or seek comment from, notoriously unsuccessful Republican operative Darcie “Hack” Johnston, who has already voiced support for Feliciano. Johnston’s opinion shouldn’t have much pull in GOP circles, but I bet she’s still influential among the True Believers who’ve been dragging the party into electoral irrelevance.

With friends like those, Phil Scott and Super Dave don’t need enemies.

Did the Dems really need more good fundraising news? Well, they got some.

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Side note from Saturday’s meeting of the Vermont Democratic Party State Committee: VDP Executive Director Julia Barnes told the gathering that this year’s Curtis Award dinner featuring Senator Elizabeth Warren was a huge success, grossing $146,000. As Barnes pointed out, that’s enough to cover half the party’s total budget for this year. Correction: one-third of the party’s administrative budget for the year.

And there was the collateral benefit of energizing donors and volunteers, Barnes noted, thanks to the enthusiasm generated by Warren’s strong message.

I can’t directly compare the Curtis Award take with the VTGOP’s vaunted Chris Christie event from last December because, as far as I can tell, the party has never publicly announced its total receipts. Beforehand, it was happy to throw around estimates of $200,000 to $300,000.

Funny thing about that. The VTGOP’s campaign finance report filed on March 15, which covered the period from July 2013 to March 15, 2014, listed total donations of $45,567.32. The vast majority of that was given between mid-November and mid-December.

Unless some of the Christie-related donations went directly into other accounts, the Christie fundraiser appears to have grossed a little under $40,000.

If any Republican apparatchiks want to correct my reckoning or, preferably, provide the actual take, please do so in the comments below or contact me directly. At least some of you know how. And I’d really like to know.

In the meantime, let’s stick with 40K. Compare the two high-profile fundraising events, and see which one was the bigger success.

Not to mention that during the March 2014 reporting period (July to March), the VTGOP spent just under $40,000. So the Christie take was pretty much gone by mid-March, leaving the Party once again starved for funds.

Corren meets the Dems

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The Democratic Party State Committee met Saturday in Montpelier, and gave its endorsement to the Party’s expected slate with one exception: Dean Corren, Progressive candidate for Lieutenant Governor. He did not actually seek an official endorsement from the state committee, but he did address the gathering and asked for their support in getting people to write in his name in the August primary.

“I got into this race on one issue,” he said, “Single payer health care.” He described this as a critical time for the issue, and said “We need a Lieutenant Governor working shoulder to shoulder with Governor Shumlin. I would be a good partner in this fight.”

(He didn’t say, but I will, that the Lieutenant Governor casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate. If Corren’s there, passing single-payer becomes easier than if Phil Scott wields the gavel. That, in itself, is a powerful incentive for Democrats, Progressives and liberals to unite behind Corren, no matter how much of a nice guy Scott may be.)

He also emphasized his common ground with the Democrats on two key issues: campaign finance reform and renewable energy. Since he qualified for public financing, you could say he has struck a real blow on the issue of money in politics. On energy, he pointed to his own professional involvement in climate change and green energy.

He also addressed the past (and for some, present) tensions between Democrats and Progressives. “We are more interested in progress than in bashing anyone.”

There was a lot of favorable reaction in the room. Corren took several questions, and all were supportive.Longtime committee member Bill Sander recalled past times when the party actively considered endorsing Republican challengers to then-Congressman Bernie Sanders, on the theory that they could get rid of Bernie and then beat the Republican two years later. Now, Sander said, “Our goal is to further the policies we believe in,” and that includes working alongside Bernie instead of trying to undercut him.

Some committee members obviously wanted to go ahead with an endorsement, but it wasn’t on the agenda. John Wilmerding of Windham County posited an endorsement via the transitive property: the state committee had previously endorsed then-candidate John Bauer; since then, Bauer has endorsed Corren; and if A equals B and B equals C, then maybe the committee has already, kinda-sorta, endorsed Corren. No one argued the point, but it remained in the unofficial realm.

After his presentation, Corren had a brief media scrum in the hallway. He pronounced himself “extremely” encouraged by the committee’s reaction. “It was wonderful. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

He was asked if he’d run into any Dem/Prog tensions in his contacts with party officials. “Actually, I haven’t,” he said. “My calls to state committee members and county chairs and so forth have all been incredibly positive.”

After this week’s anti-Prog comments from a few state senators, it was good to see the Democratic hierarchy taking a more positive view of Corren. Maybe the “Dems for Phil Scott” idea is mostly a creation of the Senate’s clubby, cloistered atmosphere.

I certainly hope so.

This was predictable, and should not be mistaken for good news

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In a classic late-Friday newsdump, “sources” have slipped word to Bloomberg News that an impasse has been reached in IBM’s negotiations to sell its chip manufacturing arm to Globalfoundries Inc. “Globalfoundries… made an offer that was rejected by IBM as too low,” says Bloomberg, which called the failure of the talks “a setback for IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty.”

She’s been in a race to meet 2015 earnings goals at all costs — most notably, by cutting the workforce and shedding any units that can’t generate profits. The strategery being, I guess, “if we keep shrinking and shrinking, we’ll grow.”

Like diving into a black hole and coming out the other side, eh?

I can believe Globalfoundries was lowballing IBM, since the word all along was that GF was not interested in IBM’s physical plants (including Essex Junction), just its engineers and intellectual property. If GF didn’t want the big costly plants, of course it would undervalue the package.

And besides, if GF wants the engineers and the brains, it sure doesn’t need to buy ’em from IBM. It can just go ahead and recruit, which is exactly what it’s been doing. Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz:

Globalfoundries… has announced in recent weeks that it has hired several top employees from IBM’s Essex Junction and East Fishkill, N.Y., plants. The company has also placed employment ads in papers serving those regions — including the Burlington Free Press.

Any IBMers who want to continue their careers must realize that GF is a better bet than IBM. It means moving, which isn’t for everyone; but GF should be able to entice quite a few people. After all, IBM has become a spectacularly awful place to work — with the constant threat of layoffs and the ever-tightening pressure to produce, produce, produce.

Now, I’m sure there’s some “intellectual property” under IBM’s control that GF would like to have. But naturally it wouldn’t offer anywhere near the amount of money IBM wants. It doesn’t need to buy the IBM assets; it just needs to pilfer the brainpower. Which it should be able to do easily, since its “competition” is the doom chamber of IBM employment.

And as usual, IBM is leaving state and local officials completely in the dark. Get a load of this convoluted statement from Commerce Secretary Pat Moulton about the Bloomberg report:

“I don’t know what that means — whether that’s good news or bad news, but I have not heard anything officially or unofficially,” she said. “Obviously having a company remain here and remain viable is important, so it was hard to know what a Globalfoundries deal — if there was one on the table — would have meant.”

I call that a cotton-candy statement: a teaspoon of substance whipped into a furious froth of nothing. It’s also a measure of the value IBM places on its relationships in Vermont: zero. IBM’s been keeping us completely in the dark for years.

If Globalfoundries was truly uninterested in IBM’s physical plant, a purchase agreement would have been bad news for Vermont. But the collapse of the deal shouldn’t be taken as a good sign. IBM will be even more desperate to spin off the unit. Or simply wind it down. And would any other potential purchaser be interested in an Essex plant that GF “had placed little or no value on… because [it is] too old”?

Two and a half years ago on Green Mountain Daily, I wrote that we should be prepared for IBM’s exit from Vermont within three years. And that it wouldn’t be Governor Shumlin’s fault, at all; it’s a result of IBM’s short-sighted, profit-chasing binge of outsourcing, downsizing, and stock repurchasing. IBM’s domestic workforce has shrunk dramatically in the past decade, and is continuing to do so. Essex is a rubber ducky in the IBM bathtub, the plug has been pulled, and we’re all spinning the drain.

My three-year prophecy is likely to miss, but my larger point remains: don’t expect IBM to stick around much longer. And don’t blame Governor Shumlin when it leaves.

It’s time to grab the State Senate by the ankles, flip it upside down, and give it a damn good shake

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Poor, poor Democratic State Senators. They face such a difficult decision.

As VPR’s Bob Kinzel reports, they’ll have to choose between their longtime colleague, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, and his Progressive challenger Dean Corren. The usually reliable but somewhat clubby Sen. Dick McCormack:

Then the question is who would you cross party lines for? Phil is a friend I’ve worked with for years, work well with. And Dean, the public financing is very admirable I have tended to agree with him on most issues so for a lot of us I think it creates a real dilemma.

Okay, wait. I’ll admit I don’t have a dog in the tired old Dem/Prog slapfights — I wish they’d each get over themselves — but McCormack thinks that supporting a Progressive and supporting a Republican are equally tough? C’mon now, which party is more closely aligned with yours on policy questions? You’re honestly having trouble choosing between the guy who’s in line with your party’s biggest policy priority (single-payer health care) and whose very campaign highlights your party’s concern with money in politics, and the guy whose party is opposed to single-payer and is uninterested in campaign finance reform?

As a nonaligned liberal, allow me to throw up in my mouth a little.

As for throwing up a lot, let’s turn to Senate Penitent Pro Tem John Campbell, who has already endorsed Scott’s candidacy. His knickers are in a knot over the prospect that a non-Democrat could become the Democratic candidate by winning the nomination on primary write-in votes:

“[To] say ‘oh well I’m  going to really run under this Party but then I’m going to try to take the nomination by getting a bunch of people to write in my name. I just think it’s a flaw in the system.”

Er, John. C’mere.  Closer. Yeah, right there.

[flicks Senatorial nose]

A couple of obvious points. First, if you wanted a Democrat to run for Lieutenant Governor, your party should have gone out and FOUND somebody. It’s your own party’s fault that there’s an appealing blank space on the primary ballot. Second, if Corren doesn’t win the Democratic nomination on write-ins, the most likely winner is Phil Freakin’ Scott.

But I guess that wouldn’t outrage Campbell because Phil Scott is a friend of his. In truth, John Campbell has no principle in play; he has a friendship and, as a very conservative Democrat, a profound aversion to Progressives.

Which gets back to the title of this post. Maybe it’s just me, but it makes no sense that a Senate that’s two-thirds Democratic defers so often to Phil Scott and fails so frequently to support solid liberal legislation.

It makes no sense to me that clubby insiders who value friendship over party — John Campbell and Dick Mazza, come on down! — are allowed to occupy such positions of power in the Senate.

So, after the election, could we please have some new leadership? Get rid of that stale air? Pretty please?

The boy in the bubble

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During Scott Milne’s campaign kickoff this week, former Governor Jim Douglas hailed the travel agent/real estate developer as a person “outside the bubble, unaffected by the stale air of the State House.” At the time, I noted the irony in those words coming from a man who lived practically his entire adult life in that very bubble. Indeed, without a doubt Jim Douglas himself produced a substantial portion of that “stale air.”

(Photo by the late great Peter Freyne.)

(Photo by the late great Peter Freyne.)

But enough subtly-worded fart jokes. I thought it was worthwhile to hammer home the point in more detail… after I make a brief detour to Douglas’ other unintentional laugh line: he invoked that discredited VTGOP talking point about Vermont getting an “F” in a “study” of friendliness toward small business.

Oh no he di’nt.

Oh yes he di’id.

As I’ve said on more than one previous occasion, this was an unscientific, mass-mailing survey conducted by the small-business website Thumbtack.com. It’s been done in each of the past three years. But Vermont was only included in the survey results for the first year, 2012, because in the two following years, not enough Vermont businesspeople responded to the survey.

Vermont’s “F” was from the 2012 study. Which was taken (1) at a much earlier point in our recovery from the Great Bush Recession, when things were lousy for almost everybody, (2) only months after Tropical Storm Irene devastated much of Vermont and derailed Governor Shumlin’s agenda, and (3) only a year and some change into Shumlin’s time as governor.

So that “F” could be credited as much to Jim Douglas as to Peter Shumlin. And it doesn’t take into account any of Shumlin’s subsequent efforts to make Vermont a better place for entrepreneurs.

In short, the grade should not be taken seriously as a measure of Vermont’s business atmosphere. Which didn’t stop Douglas from perpetuating the lie.

Okay, now let’s take a closer look at the Douglas resume, shall we?

He was elected to the House in 1972 at the age of 21, only months after graduating from college. He served in the Legislature until 1979, when he became one of Dick Snelling’s top aides. A year later, he ran for Secretary of State and won; he’d go on to serve six terms.

In 1992, he lost to Pat Leahy for U.S. Senate. For two years after that, as far as I can tell, he was out of government service.

Then in 1994 he ran for Treasurer and won. He served until 2002 when he was elected Governor. He served four terms and retired in 2010. Well, technically, January 2011.

That’s 38 years of his adult life, minus two years, giving us a total of 36 years at the public trough.

No wonder the Wall Street Journal called him a “career politician.” 

The Journal’s 2011 article took Douglas as an example of the difficulties older executives face when embarking on a second career:

Finding a fresh pursuit in midlife is never easy. The challenge looms especially large for top managers with experience in just one industry, however. Mr. Douglas has spent his entire adulthood in politics.

All right, now let’s look at Peter Shumlin, the guy who, I suppose, is Douglas’ exemplar of a person who’s lived too long in the bubble.

Shumlin was appointed to a vacancy in the Legislature in 1990, and served one and a half terms. He then served in the Senate for ten years. He ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2002 and lost.

After that, he spent four years in his family’s business, Putney Student Travel. In 2006 he returned to the State Senate, where he served until being elected Governor in 2010.

From 1990 to the present, that’s 24 years. Minus the four years outside government, that’s 20 years breathing the stale air inside the bubble.

20 for Shumlin. 36 for Douglas.

Now look, Scott Milne’s status as an outsider with a fresh perspective is a respectable enough talking point if you like that sort of thing. But Jim Douglas is the worst possible person to deliver the message. Coming from his mouth, it was completely hypocritical.

A new nominee for the Most Dangerous Republican award

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Last December, around the time of the fabled Chris Christie fundraiser for the Vermont Republican Party (projected take, a quarter mill or so; actual take, less than 50K as far as I can tell from the party’s financial filings), I posited that there was one figure in the downtrodden VTGOP who could pose a threat to the Democrats as a statewide candidate. It wasn’t Phil Scott; it was the closest thing we have to a Chris Christie — a short-tempered, get-things-done, “willing to work with both sides” kind of guy named Thom Lauzon, Republican Mayor of Barre. 

I still think he’s a solid potential statewide candidate, should he ever choose to climb the ladder. But another name has been suggested to me, and it’s an excellent choice. In fact, offhand I’d have to say he’s an even better Most Dangerous Republican than Lauzon.

I’ll give you the name, but first it’s Story Time, kids!

Starting in 2002, Craig Benson spent two disastrous years as Republican Governor of New Hampshire. While he was Governor, he appointed a little-known lawyer named Kelly Ayotte to the post of Attorney General. (In NH, the AG is an appointed position with a five-year term.) By the time her first term had come to an end,  John Lynch was Governor. He was a Democrat but he liked to play the bipartisan game, so he nominated her for a second term.

Before she served out that term, she resigned to run for U.S. Senate. And she won. And she’s now the only Republican member of NH’s four-member Congressional delegation.

The key moment in her ascendancy was her renomination by John Lynch. If he’d appointed a Democrat and sent her packing as a one-term Benson functionary, she would’ve had a much harder time continuing her political career. I firmly believe that there would never have been a Senator Kelly Ayotte if not for John Lynch being too clever for his own good.

Thus endeth the lesson. Back to Vermont, and the new nominee for Most Dangerous Republican.

Neale Lunderville.

At one time, he was the chief hothead on Jim Douglas’ team. He and Jim Barnett, who’s gone on to a very unsuccessful career as a balls-to-the-wall campaign manager, were dubbed “the Nasty Boys” by the late great Peter Freyne for their skilled knifework in Douglas’ campaigns.

Since then, little Neale has grown up — and gotten two great big helping hands from Democratic officeholders. Governor Shumlin chose him to be recovery czar after Tropical Storm Irene, and now Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger has engineered his hiring as interim head of the Burlington Electric Department.

In the process, the Nasty Boy has acquired a solid nonpartisan reputation as the go-to guy when trouble strikes. He’s been chosen by not one, but two, top Democrats to take on big administrative challenges.

Okay, here’s a hypothetical for you. In the next biennium, the Shumlin administration will unveil its plan for single-payer health care. It’ll be big, expensive, controversial, and a tough sell, even in a lopsided Democratic legislature. Win or lose, Shumlin will expend a lot of his political capital in the fight.

He also faces the whole issue of school funding and organization. Whatever he and the legislature do, more enemies will be made and more people will be alienated.

At best, Shumlin would enter 2016 having fought two extremely tough battles. Even if he wins on single-payer, he’ll be in that very dangerous period between passage and implementation, where everybody will be aware of the cost and the controversy but won’t have experienced any benefit from the new system. And if the implementation process for single payer OR school reform is difficult, contentious, or includes any stumbles, the Governor’s managerial reputation will take more hits.

And now comes, on a shiny white horse, Neale Lunderville.

Well, Lunderville 2.0, New and Improved with a track record for working under Democratic executives and managing the biggest challenges. In short, he’s Vermont’s Mr. Fix-It. The Governor won’t be able to depict Lunderville as a partisan ideologue because, after all, he chose the guy to manage the aftermath of Irene. At the same time, Lunderville will have solid Republican credentials from his tenure in the Douglas Administration. He’ll be more appealing to the conservative base than a Phil Scott will ever be.

The VTGOP won’t be in any shape to challenge the Democrats’ overall  dominance in 2016. But Lunderville could do what Scott Milne can’t do and Randy Brock couldn’t: topple Governor Shumlin.

Farfetched or believable? Just remember, if it happens, you can thank Peter Shumlin and Miro Weinberger for making Governor Lunderville a possibility.

Milne: I will not vilify Shumlin, but he’s a brazen, bullying, radical ultra-progressive

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Warm day in downtown Barre. Small crowd, mainly retirement age (Yr. Obdt. Svt. included) gathering on the front lawn of the Aldrich Public Library. The occasion? Scott Milne’s long-awaited launch of his gubernatorial candidacy.

Phil Scott was there. Jim Douglas was there. My frenemy Senator Joe Benning was there.

Who wasn’t there? Well, as far as I could tell, Barre’s Republican Mayor Thom Lauzon wasn’t there. And he usually manages to make himself conspicuous wherever the cameras gather. Interesting. I seem to recall Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz reporting that Lauzon and his wife donated $2,000 to the Governor’s campaign.

Checking… yes, yes he did.

Still, the front section of the library, comfortably air-conned, was full of Milne supporters and the legions of media desperately looking for a sure-fire story during the summer slump.

Milne was introduced by Douglas, who gave Mr. Bunny a hearty endorsement after delivering what sounded very much like a statement for his own candidacy. (Must’ve made a few hearts flutter in the Republican audience and wish for What Might Have Been; Douglas is their Beau Ideal.)

Douglas lauded Milne’s experience in “the real world” of business and commerce, a person “outside the bubble, unaffected by the stale air of the State House.” That’s rich, coming from a guy who spent virtually his entire adult life in that very bubble.

And then the Man of the Hour stepped to the plate, promising “a campaign of ideas” and said that he would “not be vilifying the Governor.”

In the following few minutes, Milne used these words in direct or indirect reference to the incumbent: doubting that Shumlin’s course is “responsible and realistic,” calling the Governor’s agenda “ultra-progressive,” referring to Shumlin as “headstrong about the need for exuberance and rapid, radical change,” characterizing his Administration as one of “unbridled experimentation,” and decried the use of “bullying tactics” and “brazen displays of power.”

But he won’t be “vilifying” the brazen, bullying, headstrong, radical, ultra-progressive Governor. Bwahahaha.

By contrast, Milne depicted himself as moderate, “cautious,” “responsible,” and reluctant to make any wholesale changes. He said “cautious” a bunch of times.

The strategy, thus, becomes clear: in order to capture the center, Milne will go all-out to portray Shumlin as a fire-breathing radical. Without, of course, vilifying him in any way.

It’s hard to see this working. Shumlin has too many centrist positions, spends far too much time courting the center, and caters to the business community far too often to be convincingly marginalized as an “ultra-progressive.” (When he said that, I could almost hear the guffaws exploding from Prog Central: “Shumlin a progressive? You must be joking!”)

Scrum!

Scrum!

After his speech, his crew made their way to the Elks Club next door for a hamburger lunch. It took Milne a while to get there; he first had to submit himself to his inaugural media scrum. The key point for me was the inevitable exchange about Act 250, given his frustration and anger over the regulatory troubles facing his dream project, the mixed-use Quechee Highlands development. It’s run afoul of the regional Act 250 board and the town of Hartford.

Milne claimed that he is “very supportive of the concept of Act 250,” but then accused Shumlin of “hijacking something into a political ideology rather than a practical program that needs to be applied more pragmatically.”

Not exactly grammatical, but you get his drift. But when asked for specifics on how the Administration had hijacked the process, Milne came up short of the mark:

“I think if you look between the poor management at the Agency of Commerce over the last four years, very poor management at the Agency of Natural Resources, there’s very evidential answers right there.”

Not much meat on those bones, is there? He charges the Administration with “hijacking” the process — an aggressive power grab — and all he can offer as proof is a nonspecific charge of “poor management.”

Hey, a travel agent ought to know that it takes positive, organized action to hijack anything. You don’t do it by accident.

All in all, it was a happy event for the true believers. But if this is the tack Milne plans on taking, he’s gonna get shellacked by the Governor.

Profiles in Courage, Dick Sears Edition… again

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It may be the offseason for lawmaking, but there’s still some occasional activity under the Golden Dome. Yes, even aside from the well-chronicled bats in our communal belfry.

Yesterday brought a hearing of the Joint Corrections Oversight Committee. On its agenda: State Auditor Doug Hoffer’s audit of the Sex Offender Registry, which found an 11% rate of “critical errors.” Which triggered a requirement in state law that the Registry must receive a “favorable” audit before the state can start posting home addresses of offenders. Which triggered yesterday’s committee meeting.

Okay, what do you think? Is an 11% “critical error” rate is a “favorable” result?

I thought not.

According to VTDigger’s Laura Krantz, most of the committee also thought not.

Rep. Sandy Haas, P/D-Rochester, said the committee should put in writing that the audit is not favorable. Rep. Bill Lippert, D-Hinesburg, agreed.

Seems simple enough. Ah, but then Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears runbled into action. Or should I say, inaction.

Sears… said to admit the audit is not positive could create fodder for a lawsuit from a defense attorney. He also worried a judgment would be binding and perhaps require another audit before the addresses can go online.

Dick Sears, who gets a lot of credit in State House circles for being a wise old hand, does this a lot. If any idea comes up that might possibly create some legal bills for the state, he puts his foot down. And so, the Joint Committee “declined to pass judgment” on whether the audit was favorable. Thus ignoring plan old common sense and, if you ask me, the requisites of justice.

Because although the vast majority of the problems uncovered in the audit have been fixed, the system remains flawed and is virtually certain to start pumping out fresh errors.

And what if we start publishing home addresses and a non-offender winds up on the list complete with home address? Or if an offender’s listed home address is wrong? Those are critical errors that could lead to disrupted lives, communities in turmoil, or even vigilante justice.

I don’t know where the Legislature goes from here. There’s clearly an appetite for posting home addresses, but there’s an obvious need to make the Registry as mistake-proof as humanly possible before that step is taken. And there probably isn’t much of an appetite for a better system that’d probably cost more money. So I guess they’ve bravely kicked this can down the road. Thanks to the “leadership” of good old Dick Sears.